Wednesday, August 28, 2013

The other day, as I was sitting at the breakfast table with the Usual Gang, one of my dining companions took out a small container of cottage cheese - one of those individual servings that comes packaged in groups of four or six. He peeled off the lid. Then, as I watched in slack-jawed astonishment, he unscrewed the top of a pepper shaker and proceeded to dump about two teaspoons of black pepper into his tiny-ass cup of cottage cheese... about a third of the contents of the shaker. Holy crap!

Barry likes pepper with his cottage cheese, but Good Gawd Awmighty, this was an awful lot of pepper! I looked at him as though he had grown a second head. “Ya like a little cottage cheese with your pepper?” I cracked.

Of course, as soon as I got home, I had to try it for myself. After all, nothing exceeds like excess.

I took a normal half-cup serving of cottage cheese and jacked it up with about half a tablespoon of Penzey’s coarse-ground Tellicherry pepper... a quantity that, taken by itself, could set your innards on fire.

Surprise! It wasn’t overly peppery at all. The dairy tamps down the fire, muting it to the level of a pleasant afterburn. In fact, I suspect that you would barely even notice the presence of a few mere shakes.

I almost hesitate to write about this. The Missus is convinced that I have burned out my sense receptors for spiciness owing to chronic overuse, and this will not help convince her otherwise. But it’s true, I tells ya!